An extension of Sports Business News, the largest online sports business news service -- featuring the comments and insights of SBN Publisher Howard Bloom

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Warren Sapp – what’s wrong with the National Football League

Warren
Sapp represents everything that is wrong with today’s professional
athlete. He is today what he has always been, an arrogant,
self-righteous man whose sense of entitlement suggests he believes he is
above the law.

Selected by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with the 12th overall pick in
the 1995 NFL Draft, Sapp was paid close to $63 million during his 12
year NFL career. Since his retirement he has worked for the NFL Network
(his contract ends on August 31, 2012). He was paid $540,000 per year as
an analyst at the NFL Network. On April 4, 2012 Sapp declared Chapter 7
bankruptcy, according to some media reports to avoid going to jail.

"Do you think I wanted to declare bankruptcy?'' Sapp told the Tampa
Times in April. "Do you think if there was any other way possible I
would have done it? It was either this or go to jail. Those were my
choices.''

Sapp believes his financial troubles are tied to a failed
construction project in Hollywood, Florida. According to published
reports, “Sapp's $6.45 million in assets includes 240 pairs of Jordan
athletic shoes worth almost $6,500, a $2,250 watch and a lion skin rug
worth $1,200. He also reported losing his 2002 Super Bowl ring with the
Bucs and his 1991 national championship ring from the University of
Miami.”

The court documents were filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Fort
Lauderdale on March 30. Sapp's average monthly income is $115,881,
according to the filings, and includes $45,000 for a final contract
payment with Showtime, $48,000 for an appearance with CCA Sports and
$18,675 as an advance for a book deal.

Jamal Lewis who earned more than $41 million in his 9-year NFL career declared bankruptcy last week.
It would seem impossible to the most football fans how Sapp and Lewis
could burn through tens of millions of dollars in so short a time.

Jack Brewer a former Giants/Vikings/Cardinals/Eagles player, who
attended Harvard Business School while still in the NFL. He went on to
work as a private wealth manager at Merrill Lynch, post-NFL and later
started his own firm, a sports marketing company has some of the answers
as to why things go so wrong for most NFL players.

“As a player, I wanted as much of the revenue as possible, given the
fact that I was playing a game that cuts your total life expectancy to
52 years old. This is the harsh reality of playing the most violent team
sport on the planet.

“But the real tragedy is the fact that over 80 percent of the players
are bankrupt shortly after taking their last snap.” Brewer wrote in an
op-ed piece for CNBC.

Brewer a five year NFL veteran always saw the forest for the trees, focused his NFL career on creating a life after football.

“Let’s be honest, most football players are from lower economic
groups and communities, football is a
violent sport, the most violent
sport today.”

Brewer noted that football players are paid millions of dollars over
the four months of the National Football League season, believes it
might help players if their contracts were paid over 12 and not four
months.

“By simply changing the way that young, unvested players — 4 years in
the NFL or less — get paid, the league would dramatically decrease the
number of players who end up in embarrassing and detrimental financial
situations.

“NFL players are paid over a four-month period, which causes obvious
budgeting issues and never really affords these young professionals the
opportunity to learn fiscal responsibility. You hear horror stories
about bad financial advisors and agents stealing from athletes all the
time.

“The fact of the matter is, the way players are paid adds more financial turmoil than the bad advisors or agents.

“If you were to pay young, highly qualified executives in any
industry their salaries over a four-month period, they would probably
have trouble budgeting their money. Players should have no choice but to
take their paychecks and bonuses over a 12-month period. They should
also have the option to defer a portion of their compensation, given
their short career spans and young retirement ages. The current system
is financial suicide.”

CBS and Showtime announced Friday Sapp would no longer be a part of
"Inside the NFL". His current NFL Network contract expires in August.
The chances of Sapp’s NFL Network being renewed -- slim and none and as
the saying goes, “slim has left the building”.

The NFL owns the NFL Network. On March 21 the day NFL commissioner
Roger Goodell handed down his Bountygate ruling Sapp told Pro Football
Talk: “My source that was close to the situation informed me that [name
omitted] is the one that was the snitch initially, I trust my source
unequivocally. …I did not call anybody at the league and I did not
receive any information from the league. ...

“That's the information that I got and I trust my source. I was given
that information and I went with it, by a reliable source.”

Sapp then went on Twitter and named former Saint Jeremy Shockey as
the former Saint who contacted the
NFL about the Saints bountygate
program.

There is no proof that Shockey was the “whistle blower”. What made
Sapp’s allegation even more shocking, while Sapp and Shockey never
played together, both played college football at the University of
Miami. Offering unsubstantiated reports on Bountygate was likely the
final nail in Sapp’s NFL Network coffin. However it was not the only
time he embarrassed his employer.

On February 7, 2010 Sapp was arrested in South Florida and charged
with domestic battery. Sapp was in Florida to appear as an analyst for
the NFL Network's coverage of Super Bowl XLIV, but following the arrest
an NFL Network spokesman said Sapp would not appear. On March 24, the
charges against Sapp were dropped.

What message does Warren Sapp send out about a National Football
League player? In fairness to Sapp none of us (other than professional
athletes) can understand the lifestyle of a professional athlete and how
they deal with the millions of dollars they are paid. Sapp wasn’t the
first and won’t be the last NFL player to lose the tens of millions of
dollars. As Jack Brewer pointed out, the system is set up for the
players to fail.

Sapp however has to be held accountable for “outing” Jeremy Shockey.
Sapp works for the National Football League. Sapp should have understood
that he needed to respect the process and not dive into Bountygate.
Embarrassing the NFL hurt Sapp, and likely served as an opportunity to
remind the NFL about what took place at Super Bowl XLIV in Miami.

Warren Sapp has lost a fortune and now is going to lose a job that
paid him more than $500,000 annually. He’s losing his job because it
appears he lacks “common sense.” The NFL Network has to fire Warren
Sapp; he represents too much risk and not enough of a reward.

About Me

The evolution of Howard Bloom’s career took a dramatic change in the spring of 1997, when Howard began publishing SportsBusinessNews.com. In its fifteen years, SBN has evolved into the largest and one of the most influential sports industry publications.